ONE MILLION patients are readmitted to hospital in emergencies within 30 days of discharge because they were rushed out of NHS hospitals early - costing the taxpayer £2.4billion.

A comprehensive report by Healthwatch England has revealed that many patients feel stigmatised during their stays in hospital, are not consulted in decisions about their ongoing care and claim they are "pushed out the door".

The shocking survey of 3,230 patients catalogued a range of "common basic failings", and concluded that the worst hit by shoddy care include some of the most vulnerable people in Britain - the elderly, the mentally ill and the homeless.

The health watchdog also suggested that an "undercurrent of ageism" could exist within the health service, with emergency readmission for the over-75s increasing by a staggering 88 per cent over the past decade.

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Hospitals often fail to tell families that their loved ones have left hospital, fail to ask patients if they have anywhere to go, and do not discuss medication with GPs and carers, the Safely Home report revealed.

Some of the worst cases laid out in the damning paper included a cancer patient sent home alone to his unheated home in winter, an 81-year-old stroke victim sent home late at night in a taxi only to be readmitted days later, and a man recovering from a suicide attempt discharged against his wishes who then killed himself a week later having received no follow-up care.

Another man, who rang an out-of-hours number after being discharged from a mental health unit, was heartlessly told: "Can't you just read a book or do a crossword for the next five hours?".

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NHS managers, clinicians and carers were accused of blame dodging

The revolving door approach to hospital discharge is letting patients down

Janet Morrison

The report went on to point out that such failings have been allowed to continue because "artificial boundaries" allow doctors, care workers and bureaucrats to avoid taking the blame - and a lack of communication means that too many patients are discharged when it is too soon, too late, or too unsafe to do so.

Leading commentators have slammed the damning revelations - claiming "the revolving door approach to hospital discharge is letting patients down".

Anna Bradley, chairman of the Healthwatch England watchdog which commissioned the report, said: "This is not a new problem, but what makes these findings worse is that in many cases some pretty basic things could have made all the difference.

"There is a huge human and financial cost of getting discharge wrong. We hope that the increased focus on integration of health and social care, and pressure on finances, will create a new impetus to fix it".

The NHS Confederation's deputy policy director Phil McCarvill added: “The scale and complexity of the NHS can sometimes make the experience of care feel less tailored to individuals’ needs.

“Delivering compassionate, dignified care must be the top priority of everyone who works in the NHS.”